


And In The Spring, I Shed My Skin

by certain_as_the_sun



Series: How to Train Your God of Mischief [1]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Loki & Hiccup Friendship, Loki Redemption, Loki is Not Amused, Loki is Toothless, Loki-centric, The Avengers (2012) Never Happened, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-25 12:51:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6195796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/certain_as_the_sun/pseuds/certain_as_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of being found by the Chitauri, Loki ended up in Midgard. Now he's stuck in the form of a dragon and an annoying little human won't leave him alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And In The Spring, I Shed My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is a really weird little idea that started when I thought, “Hey, Toothless is awfully intelligent for a dragon,” which somehow turned into, “Maybe he’s someone turned into a dragon, like Eustace in _Narnia_ ,” and that went and got muddled up with the completely unrelated thought, “What would have happened to Loki if the Chitauri didn’t find him?” And so this fic was born.
> 
> Trying to retell a story from someone else's point of view without just rehashing the film's events is surprisingly hard, so I skipped over a lot of things.
> 
> No one seems able to agree on whether a certain dragon is called the Red Death or the Green Death, so I went with "Red Death".
> 
> Also, there's a very brief _Rise of the Guardians_ reference. See if you can spot it :)

Loki fell. He fell further than, if he'd been able to think, he’d have thought it possible to fall. The Void shrieked and clawed at him like a living creature as he fell through it. Light and darkness, colours and colourlessness, sound and silence all hit him at once and ages apart. He was much too preoccupied with the constant sense of being torn apart and thrown back together to think of anything. He had long since lost the ability to scream. Still he fell, further and further down.

An eternity or less than a second after letting go of the Bifröst, he found himself falling through clouds. Not part of the Void; actual clouds. That was the first warning that his fall was about to end. The shrieking stopped and was replaced by the howling of the wind, which brought with it a vague smell of smoke and trees and the sea. That was the second warning.

Loki still wasn’t capable of coherent thoughts, but he knew that if he hit anything at his current speed the Realm – whatever Realm it was – would be minus one God of Mischief. So he did the only thing that came to mind and tried to use magic to slow his fall.

Using magic immediately after a highly traumatic journey through nothingness was a _bad idea_ worthy of Volstagg after enough mead to float a longboat. His magic sensed the danger he was in and lashed out, instinctively forcing him into a shape it thought would protect him.

That was how he found himself on a rocky beach covered with black sand, on all fours and considerably closer to the ground than he usually was. Loki stayed still for a moment, recovering from the shock of the last… however long it had been since his suicide attempt. Then he tried to discover what sort of animal he’d become.

Four legs. Wings. A tail. Scales. He had a fairly good idea of what he was before he saw his reflection in a small pool between two rocks, and what he saw confirmed it.

A dragon. Well, there were worse forms. At least he wasn’t defenceless, like he had been when, as a child just learning magic, he accidentally turned himself into a mouse.

Loki tried to turn back to his Æsir form. Nothing happened. He frowned and reached for his magic. It was still there, but it was… weak. Buried. He couldn’t access it no matter what sort of spell he tried.

“Heimdall!” he shouted to the sky, but it came out as a roar.

He panicked.

If any humans had been near the beach, they would have seen and heard a black dragon roaring and running back and forth in an imitation of pacing, spitting fireballs at a few surprised birds that flew overhead.

At last he calmed down. Even if he wasn’t a dragon, Heimdall would be neither able nor willing to answer. Thor, the brainless oaf, had destroyed the Bifrost, and Loki had turned Heimdall into an ice statue less than a day before. No help would come from Asgard.  
  
He couldn’t reach his magic. The obvious reason was that it had over-exerted itself turning him into a dragon. He _refused_ to let himself think of what would happen if he couldn’t reach it because his current form was incapable of magic. While he was waiting for it to return, he might as well find out where he was.

 

* * *

  
  
Midgard. Of all the Realms he could have fallen to, it had to be Midgard. And either he had landed in a particularly backward part of Midgard, or the Void had sent him back in time. The universe had a remarkable gift for irony.

A sense of being called somewhere tugged at the back of his mind as Loki watched the other dragons carry off their prey, staying out of sight from both them and the village’s disgruntled occupants. He ignored it.

One of the advantages to being an all-black dragon was that no one could see him if he stayed in the shadows. He watched as the humans took stock of the damages caused by the dragons and set about repairing them. He watched as a scrawny young human, in an effort to help, made a house’s roof collapse and in the process did more damage than the dragons. He watched as the human in charge of the village made plans to search for and destroy the dragons’ nest.

There were no sorcerers here, no one who could help him regain his usual form. His magic remained stubbornly out of reach. Not for the first time in his recent history, Loki let hopelessness overtake him.

He flew away and began wandering aimlessly over the Realm. What he found confirmed his suspicions: the Void had sent him back in time, unless all of Midgard had simultaneously decided to abandon what little progress they'd made in the last thousand years and were living as they had when Loki was a child. That was as unlikely as Hogun proclaiming his undying love for a troll.

He first went to the snow-covered wildernesses in the North. They made him think of Jötunheim, and an uneasy feeling took root in his chest at the thought of the Realm he tried to destroy. The longer he stayed there, the more he began to wonder, _had he been wrong?_ He was a Jötunn himself, and he wasn't a monster (or so he made himself believe, though most of Asgard - and Jötunheim - would disagree. _Strongly_ ). He tried to dismiss the thought, because if the Jötnar weren't monsters, then his father - then _Odin_ was wrong, and Loki had done a great wrong in attacking them.

He fled to the deserts and rainforests and vast oceans in the South. They were uncomfortably hot – no matter what form he was in, Loki loathed heat. He didn't stay there long. He went so far south he found himself in an icy wilderness again. The humans he encountered along the way stared, screamed and occasionally shot arrows at him or threw stones. The last group of humans always regretted it, and he found out exactly how much damage his fireballs could do to one of them. After a human nearly threw a javelin through his wing, he took to flying at night. Occasionally he saw golden sand or surprisingly animate shadows slipping into humans' homes while they slept, but he couldn't be bothered to investigate.

No matter where he looked, he couldn’t find any sorcerers or magicians. His magic was still buried so deeply he could sometimes hardly sense it.

The longer he stayed in this form, the more a new fear grew. The dragon’s instincts took over at times, and his body began hunting fish without consulting his mind. Words and concepts he had once known as well as the hallways of Odin’s castle began to disappear. It was one of the first things all magic users were warned of: spend too much time in the form of an animal, and you will become that animal mentally as well as physically.  
  
He had no way of measuring time in this body, but he thought it was well over a year since he arrived in Midgard when he found himself back where he started from. The sense of being called increased. This time, he followed the call.  
  
It was one of the worst decisions of his life.

 

* * *

 

 

The humans screamed and dived for cover as Loki shot a fireball at the strange wooden structure (once he would have known its name, but he had forgotten so much since meeting the Red Death). He flew upwards and surveyed the village, choosing his next target. He picked another wooden structure, further away from the village, and flew towards it.  
  
Everything went well, up until something wrapped around his wings. He fell towards the ground. Trees and rocks rushed up to meet him. Then he hit them, and he hadn’t felt as much pain since the Void.

Loki awoke to a human talking near him. He ignored them, too distracted by the ropes tangled around him, the ache in his tail and the feeling that something was _horribly wrong_ , until they stood on him. This was too much. He tried to lunge at them, but the pain overwhelmed him and he could only thrash feebly. It was enough to scare the human.  
  
He opened his eyes. It was the destructive young human with a knife. If he could, he would have laughed. Did the human honestly think it could hurt the God of Mischief with a _knife_?  
  
The human muttered to itself about killing him and cutting out his heart. Loki ignored it.

“I’m a Viking,” the human said. It was so obvious it was trying to convince itself that it was pathetic (and its tone and words brought back Loki’s own words – “the son of Odin” and “I am a worthy son”. He wondered if he had been as obvious before shoving the thought away). “I’m a Viking!”  
  
Loki looked at it as it raised the knife, saw its fear and reluctance, and closed his eyes. It would not kill him. It was far too frightened. And sure enough he heard it turn away.  
  
“I did this,” it said quietly.

He thought of the implications of that statement. A wave of fury hit him when he realised that this small, pathetic creature must have been the one to shoot him down. Then it cut the ropes holding him, and he was free.  
  
The dragon’s first instinct was to kill it. This creature was a threat; it must be killed. But Loki hesitated. Its words, its efforts at convincing itself it was something it wasn’t, reminded him far too much of himself.  
  
So he let it live.

 

* * *

 

 

He couldn’t fly. Well, he could fly, but he couldn’t change direction or fly high enough to get out of this damned cove. Loki screamed in rage and frustration as he fell to the ground yet again. He was hungry, he was in pain, the Red Death was calling him back, he’d never admit it but he was frightened, and he was trapped. If he was a real dragon, he’d have gone mad with panic long before now.

A fish moved in the water next to him. He lunged for it, but it dodged and left him with nothing but a mouthful of water for his troubles. He glared at the water and settled down to wait for another fish.  
  
Something fell from the top of the cliff and landed on the rocks to his left. Loki raised his head and looked for anything that might have dislodged it.

It was the human.  
  
Human and God of Mischief in dragon form stared at each other in silence. Then the human turned and left, leaving him feeling – for reasons unknown – as if he was more alone than before.

 

* * *

 

 

Loki searched the cove for any way out that didn’t involve flying. The only way he could find was a narrow pathway winding up the cliff hidden from below by rocks jutting out. If he was in his Æsir form he could have used it easily, but the dragon couldn’t.  
  
_How Thor would laugh if he knew,_ he thought as he tried to climb up the rocks and slid down again. Then he hissed angrily. He’d done his best to forget about the man who was _not_ his brother, and he’d managed very well until now.

A movement at the base of the cliff caught his eye. It was the human again, and it had a fish in its hand. It hadn’t seen him yet. Loki took advantage of this to watch it as it looked around the cove. Surely it knew that walking into a place where a dragon lived was the height of stupidity. The smell of the fish reminded him of just how _hungry_ he was, and he gave in to the dragon's instincts. He climbed down from the rocks. The look on the human's face when it saw him would have been hilarious if he'd been in any fit state to appreciate it.

The human recovered from its shock with admirable speed and held out the fish. Loki reached towards it when the sunlight caught on metal at the human's waist. He recoiled with a hiss. Did it intend to kill him, _him_ , the Liesmith, by treachery?

"You are a fool, human," he snarled. They both heard only a growl.

The human took the knife out of its holster and threw it to the ground. It was still far too close to it for Loki to approach. He growled again. The human picked up the knife with its foot and tossed it into the lake. Satisfied, Loki reached for the fish again.

"Toothless," the human said to itself when it saw his retracted teeth. "Could've sworn you had-"

Loki's teeth snapped out and he grabbed the fish.

"...Teeth," the human finished.

Then the dragon's instincts took over and Loki found himself spitting half the fish into the human's lap. He blinked and tried to work out what just happened. Ah. The dragon believed all humans were hulking, muscular creatures similar to his not-brother and the average Asgardian warrior, so it assumed this scrawny little human was starving and in need of food. The god humoured its whims because it would be hilarious to see this human trying to decide which was safer: eating a fish that had been in a dragon's mouth, or angering said dragon.

The human chose the first option. And then it tried to _touch_ him. Both dragon and god were in perfect agreement: this was a liberty taken somewhere. Loki snarled and flew away to the other side of the cove. He lay down and tried to go to sleep.

It was too much to hope the human would understand that its presence was no longer needed (unless it brought another fish).

 

* * *

 

 

Loki had always been far too curious for his own good. Just ask Sif the no-longer-golden-haired. He'd just wanted to try out a new spell he'd learned; how was he to know he couldn't undo it? Anyway, Loki was curious, and when he woke up and saw the human still there and scraping at the ground with a stick, he went to investigate.

The human was drawing a picture. A picture of Loki, to be precise. So he returned the favour. Dragons were not noted for their artistic ability, and Loki had never drawn much in his Æsir form, so his drawing did not look much like the human. In fact it didn't look much like _anything_ , but that was beside the point. It was a drawing of the human. That was all there was to it.

Said human stepped on one of the lines. Loki hissed. He hadn't gone to the trouble of drawing it simply to have his drawing ruined! It pulled back, then stepped on the line again, watching Loki all the time. He hissed again. This continued for several minutes before the human _finally_ stepped over the line. It stumbled its way around the drawing, avoiding the lines, until at last it was just in front of him.

Human and god stared at each other. Gingerly, the human reached out. Loki growled in warning. It paused. Then it turned its head away and reached out again.

It was a fool. It didn't know who he really was; as far as he knew he was the most dangerous dragon to pester his village. Yet he thought he could trust him not to bite his hand off. Loki would never understand humans. When he'd been in his Æsir form even his not-brother and his oafish friends had been reluctant to touch him. Now he was a dragon and this human _wanted_ to touch him.

He leaned forward to briefly press against the human's hand. He didn't even notice he'd stopped referring to him as "it".

 

* * *

 

 

"Hey, Toothless," the human called, setting down a basket full of fish. "I brought breakfast."

Loki hadn't realised just how _hungry_ he was until he smelt the fish. He attacked them with a voraciousness that would put Volstagg to shame. He finished the fish and stuck his head in the basket in hopes there might be a few left. That was when he felt something tugging at his tail.

He was never able to understand afterwards just what it was that made him take flight. Maybe the dragon associated anything being near its remaining fin with being trapped and unable to fly. Whatever the reason, he took off, and took one very scared, very _noisy_ human along for the ride. That was how he discovered that the human had made him a new fin, of sorts.

That was also how they both ended up in the water.

 

* * *

 

 

The human wasn't dissuaded by his unexpected bath. He came back every day, bringing plenty of fish and occasionally a rabbit with him. Loki finally realised that he didn't know his name, so he decided to call him "Sinfjötli" until he found out what he was actually called. The newly-dubbed Sinfjötli did the exact same with Loki and insisted on calling him "Toothless".

Sinfjötli seemed to have made it his life's mission to help Loki fly again. First he made the fin. Then he made a saddle. Then he made a way to control the fin from the saddle. Loki discovered that humans could be remarkably industrious. Asgardians, with centuries or millennia before them, idled away weeks on end, doing nothing but eat, drink and tell wildly exaggerated stories. Humans, who had mere decades to live, apparently never stopped working.

Learning how to use the things he made was considerably harder than making them. Several times during their trial flights around and out of the cove, they fell into the water or landed more quickly than intended. One of those sudden landings resulted in them going to Sinfjötli's village at night and breaking into the blacksmith's shop. While they were there an annoying human named Astrid nearly caught them, and Loki finally learned what Sinfjötli's real name was. The god politely waited until he was back in the cove and his human was back in the village before literally roaring with laughter. Really, " _Hiccup_ "? What _were_ his parents thinking?

Loki watched each time Hiccup left the cove. As soon as the human was safely away, he tried to climb out by clinging to the ledge a short distance away from the top. He wasn't strong enough to pull himself onto the ledge. Each time he tried he got closer to success, yet it remained maddeningly out of his reach.

He noticed something else the longer he spent around Hiccup. He could still hear the Red Death's call, but the urge to follow it had diminished. So had the urge to follow the dragon's instincts. It was probably a coincidence. It had nothing to do with the fact that knowing Hiccup would visit every day somehow made coping with life as a dragon much easier.

Loki was a talented liar, and the person he told the most lies to was himself.

 

* * *

 

 

Their first real flight could have gone better. It could also have gone worse. If it wasn't for Loki's agility and Hiccup's quick thinking, they would have bashed their skulls in on some rock. Being a god, and at the moment a dragon, Loki would probably have survived. Hiccup would not. After the danger passed and Loki was in the middle of warning off a group of Terrible Terrors with designs on his dinner, he suddenly realised he would miss the human if something happened to him. This revelation distracted him so much that a Terrible Terror was actually able to steal one of his fish. He snatched it back before the thief could eat it.

Then, of course, Hiccup went and spoiled his efforts at - ahem - terrorizing them and threw them his fish.

"You are entirely too soft-hearted for your own good," Loki told him. They both heard nothing but a growl, but Hiccup pointedly ignored him as if he understood the sentiment perfectly.

As they set off on the return journey and left the small dragons to squabble over the remaining fish, Loki wondered when his... friendship, for want of a better word, with Hiccup had become similar to his friendship with Thor before everything went so horribly wrong. Then he wondered what Hiccup would say if he knew his dragon was really the God of Lies and Mischief. He burst out laughing (his laughter now sounded like a shriek and a purr combined) at the thought, scaring Hiccup and a colony of seagulls.

"Okay, what was that about?" Hiccup asked in a tone that was simultaneously long-suffering and alarmed.

Loki didn't bother answering. There was no point when the human couldn't understand. For the first time he felt a twinge of sadness instead of exasperation at the thought he finally had a friend, and he couldn't even talk to him.

 

* * *

 

 

Loki did not like Astrid. The feeling was mutual. She came to _his_ cove, attacked _his_ human, and then tried to attack him. He felt he was perfectly justified in scaring her to within an inch of her life. It was a pity Hiccup was dragged along for the ride, but she needed to be taught a lesson, and he deserved to share in it for daring to insinuate he, Loki, could possibly be scared of her. He performed mid-air dives, spins and sudden turns with a speed he hadn't managed even before his Hiccup-induced injury (which he had mostly forgiven him for, but it still rankled that a _human_ had brought down the _god of mischief_ ). Hiccup reluctantly let him, since attempting to stop him would end with all three of them in the ocean. Loki was almost disappointed when Astrid finally couldn't stand it any more and apologised.

They flew more peacefully above the clouds over Berk and its surrounding islands. The norðrljós danced overhead. Its colours reminded Loki of the Bifröst, a thought that no longer stung as it once had. The Red Death's call tugged at the back of his mind, but he ignored it.

The humans talked about something. He ignored them, focusing on staying more or less steady and not accidentally jarring them when he flapped his wings or changed direction to glide on the wind. The Red Death's call became stronger and weaker depending on which direction he was facing. If he concentrated hard enough he could ignore it even at its strongest.

Astrid lowered her voice. He'd learned over many centuries that when someone started talking as if they didn't want to be heard, it was time to listen carefully. In the process he forgot about ignoring the Red Death.

"-have to kill a dragon - Aaah!"

The two humans shrieked in unison as Loki veered abruptly towards the call.

"Toothless!" Hiccup yelped, scrambling to regain a hold on the saddle.

His shout broke the Red Death's hold on Loki. The god snapped out of the trance-like state the call created to find himself in the middle of a crowd of dragons. He thought quickly. Trying to escape now would only draw attention to them. He could only go on, and hope either Hiccup or Astrid had the presence of mind to memorize their surroundings and tell someone at their village how to find the nest.

He had forgotten just how _terrifying_ the Red Death was.

 

* * *

 

The next day was when everything went horribly wrong. Hiccup didn't come to the cove, and Loki was annoyed to find he was _worried_ about the boy. Then the shouting started. There was nothing unusual about this in itself; humans were often shouting. Some of them seemed incapable of communicating in any other way. What wasn't normal was that a dragon's roars were mixed in with the shouts.

Astrid's words the night before returned to him. Oh, no. Surely not. Surely he wouldn't be so _stupid_...

Then the shouts turned to screams.

Loki finally succeeded in climbing out of the cove. Since he'd apparently done something to offend the Norns, this happened when he couldn't triumph in his success.

He reflected later, when he was muzzled, tied to a piece of wood with metal bars holding him down, and being loaded onto a ship, that perhaps it wasn't much of a success.

 

* * *

 

The events of the next few hours were never very clear in Loki's mind. He knew the humans used him to lead them to the nest, the Red Death's hold over the dragons was broken, Hiccup reappeared and freed Loki, and the two of them killed it. Dragons were not given to thinking extensively on past events, so the more he tried to remember during the long days waiting for Hiccup to _wake up_ , the more he found his thoughts flying off along completely unrelated lines.

At last Hiccup woke up. It was just as well no one on Asgard could see him now, because Loki was ashamed to admit he acted in a way not at all suited to the God of Mischief. Hiccup coped remarkably well with losing his leg, they could still fly, and Loki was finally out of the cove. Everything had turned out very well. Yet Loki had the uncomfortable feeling he'd forgotten something.

He remembered what it was when he was flying with Hiccup, and almost flew into a tree. His magic! He'd been so busy over the last few months that he'd completely forgotten about his magic!

That night, when Hiccup was asleep, Loki searched for his magic. He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. It was back. Much weaker than normal, but it was _there_ and he could _reach it_.

He focused on his Æsir form, reached for his magic, and his form shifted.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Florence + the Machine's "Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)".
> 
> Sinfjötli is a character in the Völsung Cycle. There's no mythological reason for Loki to name Hiccup after him; it was just the only Norse mythology name I could think of when I was writing.
> 
> Norðrljós is the Old Norse name for the Northern Lights.


End file.
